In 1830, French troops conquered Ottoman Algiers. In the following 130 years, the occupation –and subsequent annexation– of Algeria became one of the most significant examples of European colonialism. Abdelkader’s anticolonial resistance, the development of the French mission civilisatrice and the extensive infrastructure surrounding it, the rise of the F.L.N. and the Algerian war of independence, to name but a few examples, all became well-documented, well-studied episodes in modern colonialism’s most emblematic story. However, this all-colonial narrative, one where the French conquest appears inevitable and hegemonic, often obscures fundamental dimensions of Algeria’s modern history.

Our workshop seeks to address this question by considering the history of the conquest from the point of view of the conquered: the Ottoman province of Algiers. That the Algiers of 1830 had been a province of the Ottoman Empire for over three centuries has been largely ignored by historians of modern Algeria. The speakers of this workshop take as a point of departure the idea that Algeria’s colonial history cannot be understood without considering its profound Ottoman entanglements. Looking beyond 1830, we trace the deep continuities that tied colonial Algeria to its “pre-colonial” past and reveal the myriad ways Algiers remained Ottoman well after the French conquest. We explore several themes, including the discursive invention of ‘1830’ and the construction of the precolonial/colonial opposition; local petitions as sites of negotiation for old and new imperial identities; as well as mapping, archive-making, and other technologies of appropriation and re-signification of Algiers’ Ottoman past.

This workshop will take the form of an afternoon-long conference with two panels of two presenters each and a respondent for each panel. Speakers will include Zeynep Çelik, Isabelle Grangaud, Noureddine Amara, Youssef Ben Ismail, and Emmanuelle Saada.

Co-conveners: Youssef Ben Ismail, Zeynep Çelik, Emmanuelle Saada